You may be angry with Google for all these new developments, which may have caused your sites’ ranking to drown or totally disappear – your anger is justifiable.

But contrary to what many bloggers and website owners think, the recent exact match domain update (EMD) wasn’t targeted against all “EMDs.”

You need to understand this clearly before we move on.

The update was to weed out low-quality EMD sites. You know some of those niche sites that were occupying the top positions in Google homepage.

They served no real value to people who use search engines to look for products and services.

Is your content low-quality?

That’s a big question. Rather than complaining and continually looking for ways to prank Google and their rankings, you should focus on your site content.

You can’t outsource content for $1 or $5 on Fiverr and expert the quality. Or how do you define quality?

I’m sure you’ve read articles, product reviews and even blog posts that didn’t offer any value to you. It was as if you wasted your time – you can’t possibly leave a comment or appreciate the writer.

Here’s the danger of reading low-quality content. It takes what you already know and adulterates it.

For instance, if you’ve good information that targeting long tail keywords is good, and later on, you read a blog post that didn’t agree with that, it can give you another mindset. Tread carefully, my dear.

Lead the way, Google would follow

To me, Google is like a toddler that needs direction. And blog readers are the same.

You need to wake them up with your content – it’s like taping them on the shoulder.

Google wants you to lead the way. Whenever I write my content, I’d visualize Google spider as a blind man who needs you to hold him by the hand. Wherever you direct him, he goes.

When you write content for your blog, write as if you’re leading people who are blind. Yes, both Google and your target audience don’t know where they’re heading to. That’s why they’re counting on you to support them.

It means that you must have a keyword in mind. Of course, you don’t expect me to warn you against keywords stuffing or the likes – that’s a cliché to me. We need something legit and professional.

Research your keywords. Write them down and study the tone.

Write content to suit your audience

Since the last EMD update, my blog has grown from 400 daily hits to 800. The reason is because I’ve identified what my audience is looking for, even though they can’t pinpoint what exactly and I’m writing my content to guide them. You should follow similar path.

Once you’ve your keywords researched, it’s time to weave the tone into your content. I need you to understand the concept because it’s simple. Here’s what I mean by keyword tone…

Let’s assume that you’re in the acne niche. You went over to Google keyword tool to dig up some key phrases. Now, there are qualifiers and modifiers you must watch out for. Ok, here are 5 different key terms when I typed in “treat acne.”

“Best way to treat acne”
“Treat acne at home”
“How to treat acne naturally”
“How to treat acne when pregnant”“Light therapy for acne”

These are long tail key phrases, BTW. But most importantly, the qualifier tells you the tone to use when writing your content. For instance, the first term is [best way to treat acne]. The qualifier is “best way.”

If you want Google to pick up your site and send you free targeted traffic, you must write content that aligns to that tone.

That is, write content that only shares the best way. People who search for “best way” already have hundreds of ways to choose from, but they’re still confused.

They just want you to give them an assurance that your ‘best way’ works. And that’s how you can make a lot of money online as well.

Use copywriting to engage your readers

Are you enjoying this new concept? Actually, it’s not new, only that you’d be putting it to work in your content marketing practices, henceforth.

Now, when you write content that suit and solves a particular problem for your target audience, you’d automatically engage them.

They’d spend more time clicking your links, leaving comments and buying your products. Every single moment spent by a visitor to your site is tracked, by Google.

As a blogger, you need to learn copywriting basics, which help to create better content for your audience. Because good content that draws targeted traffic from search engines goes beyond keyword research and link building.

It’s about understanding why people searched for a particular term, their mood and the symptoms of their problems.

Competition isn’t so bad

If I’m the first person to make that bold statement, I need you to congratulate me. Lol!

But competition isn’t as bad as you think.

You can still drive organic traffic from Google and other search engines, if you learn how to write a keyword-rich headline, a strong introduction and using your common sense to produce quality and evergreen content.

Instead of beating your head over competition, you should look for ways to benefit from it.

If your niche is internet marketing, and you’re not ranking highly in Google – what’s the problem? I’ve seen new blogs outrank aged blogs all because of effective on-page optimization.

You can use backlinkwatch.com to study your competitors and where they got their good links from.

It’s going to help you build natural links and gradually trounce the severe competition. Bear in mind though, to succeed as a blogger/writer, you’re never to compete, but to complement. [tweet this]

Trade high rankings with quality links

Do you think SEO is dead? I don’t think so. On the contrary, real-time search engine optimization that can grow your website at the speed of light has been made possible by Google through their rigorous updates.

You’re now the only one in the deep blue sea – complaining, shouting, murmuring and gossiping can’t help your business or ranking.

You’ll have to launch out with quality content, and start building natural links. The question is, how do you build links – since Google is stricter with Penguin?

And here’s the answer – focus on quality links that align to what your target audience wants. As I said with keyword research and content writing, the links you build must focus on “the reason why.”

Contextual linking rocks – let your links flow into the content itself. If you’re using guest posting to build your links, find a way to add link on the article body itself.

And if you don’t have any good reason to hyperlink an anchor text, don’t try to squeeze it in. Or else it would appear spammy and that’s a BIG threat to your ranking.

Do you love SEO?

What I’ve just with you is the exact strategy I’ve implemented to my blog since 2011.

Don’t forget, Google isn’t in business to destroy your hard labor. Instead, they’re your partner in business and the earlier you align your content and link building efforts to suit your target audience, the better for you.

Great article John. No doubt content is king but this fails when you do not have enough backlinks. You have to go for backlinking any how. As i am struggling for my sites. Anyway, i am testing few other tips on my new blog http://www.amplemoney.com/ , will get the results soon.

Good point, your content must be the king and have good valuable to your reader…and you must be the best at your niche, that mean you have a good SEO, good expertise and on and on; as a blogger can you make it? Or as business men you have to pay someone to do it for you …thank for the article

Google is for me is the best search engine compare to others.They provide so many great tools for the community to use. Especially the keywords tool, I’m just in love it with and I haven’t none other keyword tools work like Google Adwords.

I am not sure if I agree with you all the way but there is no doubt that SEO is dead and burried. But you are very right on quality content for your readers, without it you might as sell say goodbye to your business.

Michael, I just checked out your website traffic through “Compete.” Seems that your site gets very little traffic. What makes you an authority on this subject if you have no traffic to your own website? I guess I’m saying, why should I listen to you?

In answer to your question, yes. If your website is about “Growing Traffic” that people get sent to from an article you write about dominating Google, absolutely I think you should have an over abundance of traffic in your statistics.

Great article. I am relatively new to on-line business, and the information can be confusing, some people say backlink, others content, I am learning content is king. You must offer the reader something that motivates them

Great tips Michael. The first and the foremost thing is – quality is very important. Next to that, you must do some SEO for your site to expect better rankings on the SERPs. I think building relevant backlinks is quite important and can be taken as necessity too :).

Always if the content written is unique and fresh, then you don’t need SEO techniques. Google looks for new things and start to index them. If we are unique, then ranking at the top of the page is not difficult.

"How I Went From Zero to Over $100,000 a Month"

The Original Dot Com Mogul

John Chow, a damn fine person, friend of the community, Ultimate Fighting Championship contestant, member of the Save the Whales Foundation, the man who controls the black market on baby seal pelts and member of the probably yo’ daddy foundation...

John Chow rocketed onto the blogging scene when he showed the income power of blogging by taking his blog from making zero to over $40,000 per month in just two years.